Women who study medicine just for financial reasons could be mistaken. A study published in the Journal of Human Capital found that most female primary-care doctors would have earned more money over their careers working as physician assistants instead of becoming a doctor, due to the high upfront costs for this profession. However, the opposite was found to be true for the average male. According to M…

Scientists from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) and the University of Ottawa (uOttawa) have discovered that a drug called fasudil can extend the average lifespan of mice with Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) from 30.5 days to more than 300 days. The study is published in BioMed Central’s open access journal BMC Medicine, by Dr. Rashmi Kothary, his graduate student Melissa Bowerman and others. SMA is the leading inherited cause of death in infants and toddlers, affecting approximately 25,000 people in Canada and the United States…

As guidelines recommend, doctors appear to be stopping anti-TNF medications before surgery, but may be doing so far sooner than is necessary, according to a new study by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery. These medications are used to treat a variety of inflammatory diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, and better timing of withdrawal prior to surgery might minimize the risk of disease flares…

Most jobs today require much less physical activity than a few decades ago, a trend that has contributed significantly to the rapid increase in America’s obesity rate, researchers from Louisiana State University reported in the scientific journal PLoS ONE. Automation and different working systems have turned many physically active occupations into predominantly sedentary ones, the authors explained. Approximately 20% of private industry jobs today in America require a moderate level of physical effort, compared to 50% five decades ago, the researchers wrote. Lead researcher, John S…

Being less active and eating more food has led to the average UK male weighing over a stone more in 2000 than he did in 1986, reflecting a rising trend in obesity rates. This was the conclusion of a British Heart Foundation-funded study led by Dr Peter Scarborough of the Department of Public Health at Oxford University and published in the British Journal of Nutrition. It reflects a rising trend in obesity rates: 25 per cent of men in England were classed as obese in 2008, compared with only 7 per cent in 1986/87…

A year after a government panel revised its recommendations for breast cancer screening, many professional organizations have not followed suit. Where does this leave the average woman? “Experts agree mammography saves lives, and all major organizations still recommend regular mammograms. The disagreement is in what age to start, what age to stop and how frequently you should have it done,” says Mark Helvie, M.D., director of breast imaging at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center…

TUESDAY, Feb. 23 — Although physicians still work long hours, the past decade has seen a sharp decline in the average number of hours they work each week, a new study finds. From 1976 through 1996, the average work week of doctors remained steady,…

TUESDAY, Feb. 2 — It’s unusual for a paper in a medical journal to be accompanied by an editorial saying that the conclusion reported in the paper might be “overly simple and consequently not clinically useful.” However, that is exactly what has…